A related quote can be found in a USA Today article from Feb. 21, 2016, where an official muses “Our first focus is to look at what we do currently and making sure that that’s relevant. And if it is, great, we’ll continue to do it, because historical comparison is really important to the evaluation process. But if we believe that there’s something that’s not relevant, then what can we replace it with that will help us evaluate”? While this quote seems to be quite similar to what we’ve seen above, it actually comes from Jeff Foster, president of National Football Scouting, Inc., which runs the annual “NFL Scouting Combine”. The Scouting Combine is a very popular staple of ESPN and the NFL Network broadcasting, and hundreds of thousands of people tune in to watch former college pigskin stars try to achieve their best results in the following events:

40 yard dash

Bench Press-maximum reps at 225 pounds

Vertical jump

Broad jump

3 cone drill

Shuttle run

The USA Today article notes that a committee “of league executives, scouts, coaches, athletic trainers, team physicians and others” is being formed to “review all phases of the annual event”.

No, a quarterback’s throwing session on the field won’t be swapped for one in a virtual reality environment anytime soon. But the days of players training for months to score high in tests such as the 40-yard dash, vertical leap and bench press–sometimes derided as the “underwear Olympics” –could be numbered.

“We’re continuing to explore everything in an effort to improve,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said. “So, if there are ways to tweak, improve, modify anything we do, we’ll explore that…The mantra is, how can we get better?”

“You know you don’t want to get away from the traditional drills that you’ve done because you have so much information stored over the years for a comparison,” says Pittsburgh Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert, “but you don’t want to grow stale either.”

Such will be the main argument against any proposal to scrap or alter drills like the 40-yard dash and the vertical jump: A vast ocean of data sets from previous combines help evaluators compare and contrast prospects from various years.

“The one thing about the combine traditionally over the years is you have the ability to compare, year after year, the same drills,” says Los Angeles Rams coach Jeff Fisher. “So we have information where we can go back 10, 15, 20 years and compare players to players. In the information age right now, it’s becoming much easier to do that.” Says one AFC scout: “In order for new drills to be used, it will take years for them to have as much meaning.”

The changes to the SAT will probably be net positives in the long run, but in the short term they have caused a lot of worry for a great many people, and they also feed the fire of doubt about the validity of the tests as meaningful ways to compare applicants from year to year. The proposed changes to the NFL Scouting Combine seem to threaten to have similar results. It’s not too late for the NFL to try to learn from the turmoil and upheaval going on in college admissions. Of course, football has never really paid attention to the SAT, so perhaps my hope is misplaced.